What Shall We Do Now?
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"What Shall We Do Now?" is a song by the British progressive rock band Pink Floyd, written by Roger Waters.
It was originally intended to be on their 1979 album The Wall, and appeared in demo versions of The Wall, but was omitted due to the time restraints of the vinyl format. In its place is a much shorter song, titled "Empty Spaces", which segues directly into "Young Lust". This was a last-minute decision; the album's sleeve notes still feature the song in its track listing, and include its lyrics.
"What Shall We Do Now?" would be performed at all concerts for The Wall, taking places of "Empty Spaces", and so appears on Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live 1980-81. It was also included in Waters' 1990 The Wall Concert in Berlin, and so appears on the album The Wall Live in Berlin.
Composition
The beginning of the song is built similarly to "Empty Spaces": a slow, dark progression that moves towards the lyrical section, which bears a significant difference to that of Empty Spaces. Here, the lyrics are more literal, citing Pink's life as a rock star as a reason for building his wall. Written perhaps from experience by Roger Waters, the lyrics ask, "Shall we set out across the sea of faces/In search of more and more applause?"
Where "Empty Spaces" ends and moves into "Young Lust", "What Shall We Do Now?" continues into an entirely different direction, exploding into a fast-paced rocker. The lyrics describe the superficial life of rock stars and its detrimental effect on the protagonist Pink.
The Film
The song was featured in the film version of The Wall, coupled with an animated sequence by Gerald Scarfe. The animation - a favored segment among Pink Floyd fans - starts with the image of two flowers caressing each other. Synchronized to the music, the flowers both copulate and fight (the male flower at one point is shaped like a penis, and the final form of the female flower is of a vulva), ultimately ending with the "female" flower consuming and destroying the "male" flower. This theme of female betrayal and rejection is one that repeats itself through Roger Waters' work, though it is not clear if this sequence is due to Waters or Scarfe.
The flower sequence ends as soon as the first lyrics ("What shall we use...") are sung. The female flower, now transformed into the hawk-like creature from "Goodbye Blue Sky", flies into the distance as a wall is built stretching into the horizon. As the song speeds up and launches into "Shall we buy a new guitar?/Shall we drive a more powerful car?...", the animation becomes largely abstract and psychedelic - flowers turn into barbed wire, a baby suffers a metamorphosis and turns into a reptile and then into a Neo-Nazi stormtrooper, who smashes the head of an innocent man with a rail and finally - the wall breaks through a church and the rubble turns into casino-like temple, which produces more and more bricks. The image of Pink is contorted and transformed into an array of objects relating to Pink's wall: a naked woman, a needle, a guitar, a car, an MP-40... The sequence ends as Pink becomes a hammer (a hammer that would reappear in the animated sequence of "Waiting for the Worms").